LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – When NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed in a space capsule, reaches the final leg of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it will broadcast a radio alert as it enters the thin Martian atmosphere.
By the time that signal reaches the mission managers, some 204 million miles away at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, Perseverance will have already landed on the Red Planet – hopefully unscathed.
The six-wheeled rover is expected to take seven minutes to descend from the top of Mars’ atmosphere to the surface of the planet in less time than the 11-minute radio transmission to Earth. So the final, self-guided descent of the rover’s spacecraft on Thursday will take place during a white break that JPL engineers affectionately call the “seven minutes of terror.”
Al Chen, head of the JPL descent and landing team, called it the most critical and most dangerous part of the $ 2.7 billion mission.
“Success is never assured,” Chen told a recent news conference. “And that’s especially true when we try to land the biggest, toughest and most complicated rover we’ve ever built in the most dangerous place we’ve ever tried to land.”
Much depends on the outcome. Building on the discoveries of nearly 20 U.S. forays to Mars dating back to the flight of Mariner 4 in 1965, Perseverance could set the stage for scientists to show conclusively whether life existed beyond Earth, while paving the way for possible human missions to the fourth planet from the sun. . As always, a safe landing comes first.
Success depends on a complex sequence of events that run smoothly – from blowing up a giant, supersonic parachute to deploying a jet-powered ‘air crane’ descending to a safe landing spot and hovering above the surface while the rover is deployed. lowered. with a chain on the ground.
“Persistence has to do all of this alone,” said Chen. “We can’t do anything about it during this period.”
If all goes to plan, the NASA team would receive a follow-up radio signal shortly before 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time confirming that Perseverance landed on Martian soil on the edge of an old, long-lost river delta and lake bed.
SCIENCE ON THE SURFACE
From there, the nuclear battery-powered rover, roughly the size of a small SUV, will embark on the primary goal of its two-year mission – deploy a complex array of instruments to look for signs of microbial life that may flourish. Mars billions of years ago.
Advanced power tools drill samples from Martian rock and seal them in cigar-sized tubes before returning to Earth for further analysis – the first such specimens humanity has ever collected from the surface of another planet.
Two future missions to retrieve those monsters and fly back to Earth are in the planning stages of NASA, in partnership with the European Space Agency.
Perseverance, the fifth and by far most advanced rover vehicle sent by NASA to Mars since Sojourner in 1997, also contains some groundbreaking features not directly related to astrobiology.
Among them is a small drone helicopter, nicknamed Ingenuity, which will test a powered ground-to-ground flight on another world for the first time. If successful, the four-pound (1.8 kg) whirlybird could pave the way for low-altitude aerial surveillance of Mars on later missions.
Another experiment is a device to extract pure oxygen from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars, a tool that could prove invaluable for future human life on Mars and for producing rocket propellant to fly astronauts home.
‘SPECTACULAR’ BUT FARM
The mission’s first hurdle after a flight 472 million kilometers from Earth brings the rover intact to the bottom of the Jerezo crater, an expanse 45 kilometers wide that scientists believe. can harbor a rich treasure of fossilized micro-organisms.
“It’s a spectacular landing site,” project scientist Ken Farley told reporters at a conference call.
What makes the crater’s rugged terrain – deeply carved by long-gone liquid water – so enticing as a research site, makes it treacherous as a landing zone too.
The descent sequence, an upgrade of NASA’s last rover mission in 2012, begins as Endurance, encased in a protective shell, pierces the Martian atmosphere at 12,000 miles per hour (19,300 km per hour), nearly 16 times the speed of sound on Earth.
After a parachute is deployed to slow its fall, the descent capsule’s heat shield will collapse to release a jet-powered “air crane” hovercraft with the rover attached to its belly.
Once the parachute is thrown overboard, the overhead crane’s jet thrusters are immediately fired, slowing its descent to walking speed as it approaches the crater floor, navigating itself to a smooth landing site, away from rocks, cliffs and sand dunes.
As it soars over the surface, the overhead crane is due to a lower persistence on nylon tethers, breaking chords when the rover’s wheels reach the surface, then flying away to crash at a safe distance.
Should all work, said deputy project manager Matthew Wallace, the post-landing exuberance would be fully on display at JPL, despite COVID-19 security protocols that have kept close contacts within mission control to a minimum.
“I don’t think COVID will be able to stop us from jumping up and down and punching with fists,” said Wallace.
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty and Will Dunham